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It is easy both to overstate and understate the meaning of the Justice Department's decision Monday to alter its policy toward medical marijuana.

The Obama Administration's ballyhooed shift away from federal prosecution for state-sanctioned pot sales and use does not necessarily signal a turning point in the effort to legalize (and tax) marijuana. We are probably still a generation or two away from that. But the new White House policy is no small matter, either, for it means that tens of thousands of Americans now are free from federal persecution and prosecution for conduct that is completely legal in their own states.

Federal prosecutors now will get little internal blame for failing to bring criminal charges against people who are lawfully selling or using medical marijuana. Nor will federal lawyers necessarily get kudos within the department if they aggressively pursue medical marijuana cases. Forget all the nonsense about federal funding and national endorsements of drug use. The official government position now reverts simply to something akin to legal neutrality: if you smoke it, we won't come, because we have more important things to do with our time.

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